1. Field of the Invention
The present invention refers to an electronic card for commercial operations and to an encoding console to be used for the initial loading of the code assigned to the user of the said card, and, more particularly, it refers to a card of the type that includes means of storage of data and identification codes of the owner of the said card, previously recorded with the aid of the said encoding console, which permits verification that the carrier of the said card is actually its owner or a person authorized to use it in commercial operations. That is to say, that the user of the card can demonstrate, with the aid of the same card and upon request of the personnel in charge of receiving payment for the sale of a product or provision of a service, that he/she is entitled to use the said card.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Until now, the purchasing cards or credit cards used for most varied commercial operations had a magnetic tape incorporated where the data and the user code are recorded, among other possible information. At the time of acquiring a product or paying for a specific service, all the purchaser had to do is present the card, sign a receipt where the data of the client and of the card are transcribed and usually to present an identification document of the purchaser. This, in general, is considered sufficient for accepting the legitimate ownership of the carrier of the card as valid.
Unfortunately, it happens more and more frequently that persons who are not duly authorized, use the card or cards of the legitimate owner to carry out commercial operations for their own and exclusive benefit. In the case of robbery, theft or misplacement of documentation, including identification documents and purchasing and/or credit cards, if the corresponding denunciation has not been made immediately, this situation becomes more risky for the owner of the card, since the amounts to be debited in a corresponding bank account, could reach large figures that could cause serious economic damage.
With the purpose of providing an effective solution to these problems, the card which is the object of the present invention permits verification of the legitimacy of the owner or person authorized to use the said cards in commercial operations of purchasing and/or credit, which is done with the aid of visual and/or auditory information from the same card and obviously to the person in charge of checking and accepting the corresponding payment to be made in this way.
That is to say, that the invention which will be described below, can be carried to practice in the form of cards of the type mentioned above, which include, for example, a magnetic data storage tape for the operation of automatic tellers.
As it will be explained below, the verification of the nature of xe2x80x9cauthorized userxe2x80x9d is carried out by entering a personal code manually into the card, after which, if the entered code is correct, a signal indicating authorization becomes activated.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide an electronic card for commercial operations, where the said card is the type used as purchasing card and/or credit card and includes means of storage of data and codes of the user of the said card, such as magnetic tapes, in which the said data storage means and codes comprise an electronic circuit connected to means of input of initial recording, by means of an encoding console, of the user code in a memory of the said electronic circuit, the said card having means of direct manual entry of the verification code of the user authorized to use the card (operable at any time when such verification is required), the said card also including means of information about the correct entry of the code.
It is also an object of the present invention to provide an encoding console to be used for the initial loading of the code assigned to the user of the card in accordance with any of the previous claims, which comprises a magnetic tape reading head and a reading/recording head of the card, connected to a microprocessor programmed according to an operating sequence of verification and recording of data, codes and messages about the status of the said card, this said microprocessor being, in turn, connected to an alphanumeric display exhibiting the messages of the status of the card, to an alphanumeric keyboard of the initial loading of the user code and to a printing head of the assigned code.